Terror tab. (Health Care).The bill for terrorism preparedness is coming due for area hospitals. A task force composed of county emergency and hospital industry officials has given its estimate of the cost for the protective gear, medical supplies and drugs Los Angeles County hospitals should purchase. The cost is $34,000 at a minimum for each facility, and several times that for larger hospitals that would be expected to draw larger numbers of casualties in any chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack. "Each hospital is going to have to determine (the drug stock) they want to have on hand' said Carol Gunter, assistant director of the county's Emergency Medical Services An Emergency medical service (abbreviated to initialism "EMS" in many countries) is a service providing out-of-hospital acute care and transport to definitive care, to patients with illnesses and injuries which the patient believes constitutes a medical emergency. Agency. The tab does not include the cost of decontamination decontamination /de·con·tam·i·na·tion/ (de?kon-tam-i-na´shun) the freeing of a person or object of some contaminating substance, e.g., war gas, radioactive material, etc. de·con·tam·i·na·tion n. facilities, such as outdoor showers, that the county wants hospitals to set up. That issue is still being studied by the task force, and federal grant funding may be available. The supplies are intended to outfit a five-member hospital decontamination team that would be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, meaning 25 to 30 hospital personnel would need training. Among the dozen-plus drugs recommended are atropine atropine (ăt`rəpēn, –pĭn), alkaloid drug derived from belladonna and other plants of the family Solanaceae (nightshade family). , a nerve gas nerve gas, any of several poison gases intended for military use, e.g., tabun, sarin, soman, and VX. Nerve gases were first developed by Germany during World War II but were not used at that time. antidote, and Cipro, the antibiotic effective against anthrax anthrax (ăn`thrăks), acute infectious disease of animals that can be secondarily transmitted to humans. It is caused by a bacterium (Bacillus anthracis . |
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